Unjust holdings

 the advantaged (whose current holdings came about in an unjust way) cannot say “we are justly entitled to our standard of living and the poor are not entitled to any more from us.”

In his 2006 article "Environmental Degradation, Reparations, and the Moral Significance of History", Simon Caney argues against what he deems the Causal and Beneficiary Accounts regarding reparations for environmental injustice. On the former account, perpetrators of environmental injustices ought to pay reparations to the victims of those injustices (467). With respect to this account, Caney raises the following question: "Is it, however, fair to say that a state that was causally responsible for an injustice performed in the nineteenth century should pay reparations two centuries later?" (469). Caney argues that it would not be fair. Consider a person who has only recently migrated to a country that centuries ago perpetrated injustices--Caney thinks that person can not reasonably required to contribute to paying what the country owes (469-470). Similarly, Caney suggests that it would be wrong to require that current South Africans repay loans that the South African state took out during apartheid, insofar as those citizens had no role in the decisions to take out the loans in the first place, and it would be unfair to make British women pay for harms caused by the impact of Britain during the industrial revolution since they were not allowed to vote until 1918 (470). In short, Caney argues that the Causal Account regarding reparations for environmental injustice cannot be fairly applied in important cases, because the relevant agents (whether individuals or states) are deceased, and those who could plausibly be made to pay in their stead are often not causally responsible for the injustices in question. 

On the Beneficiary Account, those who benefit from environmental injustices ought to be the ones who pay reparations. On such an account, an agent could be obligated to pay reparations even if that agent did not cause, or even contribute to causing, the injustice--so this account is substantively different than the Causal Account. However, Caney claims that abandoning the Causal Account entirely and adopting the Beneficiary Account by itself without any attention to the causal origins of environmental injustices, would be "an extremely drastic option" because "[i]t is a deeply entrenched view that those who cause a harm have some moral obligation to address" it (472). In other words, an account of reparations for environmental injustices that does not take the fault of causal actors into account would run against deeply held intuitions (ibid.) Moreover, Caney argues that like the Causal Account, the Beneficiary Account also suffers from some difficulties when considered in the context of an intergenerational problem like climate change. In particular, some of those who have benefitted from environmental injustices have already died as well. Thus, on this account, current beneficiaries would have to pay for what the deceased owe but cannot pay, which Caney claims is unfair (473). 

In light of these problems (and others less compelling objections that I won't discuss here) that Caney identifies with these two accounts, he argues "that one can recognize the importance of historic injustices and attribute moral relevance to such events without calling for reparations" (477). He explains

historical injustices have significance in one specific and quite restricted sense, namely that they call into question the legitimacy of the current distribution and hence (some) wealthy people's entitlements to their current holdings. The existence of historical injustices makes it much more difficult for those who are currently wealthy to explain why they are entitled to keep the wealth they currently possess and why the poor are not entitled to more. (477)

In other words, insofar as people who are currently wealthy cannot in good conscience claim that their wealth was amassed fairly, then the moral force of their claim to be entitled to that wealth dissipates. Insofar as current wealth holdings did not come about fairly, those who are wealthy lose the crucial justification for resisting redistribution of that wealth. In the context of climate change, Caney argues that this line of reasoning implies that those who are alive and wealthy today have duties to protect the climate-vulnerable (479).

While Caney focuses his argument on the case of global anthropogenic climate change, I am curious about whether/how his arguments would carry over to other contexts in which it is often thought that reparations are owed. Caney certainly doesn't preclude this sort of extension of his account in the argument he makes, he just does not take up the task directly himself. In order to investigate the applicability of Caney's account to other contexts, we ought to do two things 1) critically evaluate Caney's argument for any internal problems that would prevent its viability generally, and 2) assess whether any features of the target applications will make an important difference to the success or failure of Caney's argument in those contexts. 

First, let me raise two considerations bearing on Caney's arguments against the Causal and Beneficiary Accounts. Caney takes himself to have established that the Causal Account faces problems on its own, that combining the Causal and Beneficiary Accounts leads to trouble, and that the Beneficiary Account considered by itself is untenable. However, it seems to me that there is an aspect of the Causal Account that Caney has overlooked and that a reconciliation between the Causal and Beneficiary Accounts is more plausible than Caney makes it out to be. Let me explain.

Caney's most compelling objection to the Causal Account is that dead perpetrators can't pay. True enough! However, consider the problem from the perspective of descendants of the the perpetrators. You might think that we have special obligations vis-à-vis our ancestors. For instance, I may have a special obligation to clear debris off of my grandfather's gravesite that living persons who are not related to him do not share. Similarly, if my grandfather had dumped toxic waste on your property before he died, which is currently poisoning you, you might think that I have a special obligation to see to it that the waste is cleaned up and that your health is restored insofar is possible, and that you are compensated insofar as it is not possible. Thinking about the case of climate change, suppose my grandfather was an oil executive, or lumber baron, or some other titan of industry whose decisions have caused significant climate impacts due to green house gas emissions. You might think that, supposing that grandfather has died and can no longer answer for his own actions, I might have a special kind of responsibility to fight climate change on account of his actions in virtue of my particular relationship of kinship to him.

I grant that this suggestion--that I have special duties vis-à-vis the consequences of my ancestors' actions--may strike some as implausible and/or unfair. Why should I be held accountable for my grandfather's actions any more than any one else should? After all, they weren't my actions! However, I would suggest that this sort of responsibility is actually in close keeping with other seemingly reasonable thoughts and actions we typically endorse regarding our ancestors. If a woman wins an award and dies before being able to attend the award ceremony, it would be plausible for her daughter to attend the ceremony and symbolically accept the award on the behalf of her deceased mother, in virtue of the special sort of relationships that obtain between mothers and their children. If descendants can "stand in" for their ancestors in such positive circumstances, why not the negative ones as well? 

In light of these considerations, if you think that descendants have special kinds of obligations towards their ancestors, then you may find a version of the causal account more palatable than Caney does. In particular, according to the modified version, the perpetrators should pay reparations to the victims unless the perpetrators are deceased, in which case the the descendants of the perpetrators should pay. Suppose we apply this reasoning to the case of injustices of slavery, rather than global anthropogenic climate change. We would conclude: the descendants of those who enslaved others should pay reparations to those harmed by slavery. I suggest that those who would argue against this view need to either reject that descendants have the sort of special obligations to their ancestors that I have indicated, or otherwise explain why this prima facie duty does not obtain in this case. 

Let us turn back now to the Beneficiary Account. Caney argues that by itself, this account is too counterintuitive to plausibly adopt by itself. However, consider again Caney's own conclusion: the argument that those who are alive and wealthy today could have plausibly made against redistribution of their wealth is undercut by the fact that their wealth was amassed through historical injustices. 

And this seems right. If I have inherited ill-gotten wealth, even if that inheritance is legal, it is surely not moral precisely since the wealth was ill-gotten. But this line of reasoning applies only in the case in which I am 1) wealthy and 2) that wealth resulted from injustices. If I am not wealthy, I have no impetus to make the anti-redistributive argument in the first place. If the wealth that I have was justly acquired, my claim to entitlement cannot be undercut by appealing to the wealth's ill-gotten origins, since by stipulation there are no such origins. So, the circumstances in which Caney's reasoning apply are just those circumstances in which I am a beneficiary of injustices. It seems, therefore, that Caney should accept that the Beneficiary Account and the Causal Account are compatible because his conclusion essentially instantiates the former and he claims that the latter cannot be rejected outright. With this in mind, it is worth considering Caney's objection to this combination of accounts in detail. 

Caney considers the possibility that the perpetrator should pay if living, but if not, that then the beneficiary should pay (472). Objecting to this possibility he writes,

The key problem is this: If the receipt of benefits can generate an obligation (when the perpetrator of the injustice that led to this benefit is no longer alive), then why does the receipt of benefits not generate an obligation (even when the perpetrator is still alive)? (472-473).

To illustrate the problem, he invites us to imagine two scenarios. In scenario 1, A perpetrates an injustice that harms C and benefits B, and then A dies before compensating C. In this scenario, B, the beneficiary is left to pay. Scenario 2 is the same except that A lives on. So long as A is alive, A ought to pay, so B does not have to in scenario 2. But this, Caney thinks, "seems rather odd" because if the status of beneficiary incurs a duty in one case, then why not in the other (473)? Caney then abruptly abandons the possibility of a joint Causal-Beneficiary Account.

However, Caney's argument here is clearly unconvincing. Caney fails to deal with the obvious response to the question posed above, namely, that in such circumstances both the perpetrator and the beneficiary incur obligations to pay. In the case of slavery, this would imply that those who enslaved others and those who benefitted from that enslavement have a prima facie duty to pay reparations to those who were harmed by that enslavement (which plausibly include more than those who were themselves enslaved). However, when the perpetrators are dead and thus cannot pay, that does not eliminate the duty of the beneficiaries to pay.

Bearing all of these considerations in mind, it seems to me that Caney's argument leaves room for the following account:

1. Living perpetrators of injustices ought to pay reparations to those thereby harmed. 
2. The dead cannot pay reparations for injustices they caused, but their descendants have a special obligation to pay the reparations that their ancestors would have owed, were they alive.
3. Beneficiaries of injustices have an obligation to pay reparations to those harmed by the injustices from which their benefits derive, even if those beneficiaries were not themselves perpetrators of the injustices, and even if they bear no special relationship to the perpetrators over and above having benefitted from their actions. 

I see no problem with these obligations existing simultaneously since there is no reason that only one group needs to pay alone if several should. In the case of climate change, living perpetrators, descendants of dead perpetrators, and beneficiaries of climate-related injustices should pay reparations to those harmed by climate change. In the case of slavery, this account would imply that those who enslaved others, their descendants, and those who benefited from slavery owe reparations to those harmed by slavery.

If this account is defensible, then Caney's argument has not conclusively rejected the moral impetus for reparations. This account will not however, be appealing to someone who thinks that descendants do not hold special obligations for the actions of their ancestors. However, note that a person who holds that their are not such special family ties may have a hard time explaining why the inheritance of wealth along family lines is morally justified in the first place, and so may have other, more straightforward reasons for current re-distribution of wealth to curb suffering.